Movies Realism Literature Review

Introduction

Cinemas are the central spot of people’s visual entertainment, acting as the medium between the art of movie directors and the audiences seeking the getaway from real world reality. It is at the cinema where people enjoy themselves by watching movies that they may find interesting initially regardless of the language, locality or storyline, as long as that one particular movie is intriguing enough to make them go to the cinema to get their movie-o-meter filled with appealing crafts from many directors.

The cinemas as they are today are far significantly different from what they used to be decades ago, as this highly profiting business has been going on since the 1850’s, particularly originated in England to be the first in public screening, although the first use of movie projection is unknown. However, putting aside the revolutionary cinema technology, one good movie is mostly contributed by the production team dedication and hard works. It should not matter if a movie is less use in impressive CGI since a ‘plain’ movie but with proper cast and content, it could match with a movie rich in the technology.

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This kind of good content or storyline is another factor that has been influencing both the production to create such movie which is poor in fake yet astounding visual appearance but to pursue more on the content largely. It has also been observed that a good movie needs good script or dialogue other than the casts, for instance for Vendetta, it did have a few scenes in CGI but the real strength behind the success of this movie was the dialogue, its great casts and the political theme.

The mentality of the locals towards Malaysian made movies has always been criticized by Malaysians ourselves; however the irony is despite the constant claim of Malaysians that they could tolerate Malaysian movies, this phenomenon still exists, where people especially the research subject, Malaysian audiences, stand on this issue of the reasons they ditch local most local movies as unrealistic in contrast to its crux of escaping reality. Often in newspapers and mass media people could be seen writing to editors on how disappointed they were in local movies direction but praised the realism aspect on foreign movies, especially of Hollywood.

The reason movies or any other forms of visual entertainment were created was to add some unrealistic factor based on the ‘reality’ of the world outside the movie, since the movie production cannot make money if they just simply show what the audiences have gone through every day in their lives, nothing of new and fresh that could catch the attention of the audiences. This research is anticipated to know why such paradox exists among the local viewers particularly, or something about the mentality of Malaysian audiences.

When this peculiarity is triggered, there are parties affected definitely. The obvious impact would be on production companies, with very narrow focus on local market itself, these production companies would not be able to sustain longer given that this ‘sentiment’ goes on. It is obvious enough since when there is lack of support and interest, plus the unfair discernment by the Malaysians, the companies have no other way than to close down production, or face far worse condition of bankruptcy.

It is not just the companies that would have to shut down, but indirectly the actors and actresses would have to start over something new to accommodate their lives, the fortunate enough to have backup form of income could still survive, but the bigger impact is the industry will be crumbled, as the industry has never been given a chance to prove that Malaysian movies could evolve and change the mindset of Malaysians in the first place.

Secondly, local TV companies would also face difficulties and humongous expense to procure foreign TV contents more to cater the hankering of viewers, as well as to fill in the absence or the sheer lack of local movie content. The negativity cycle continues to Malaysian government policy of foreign content, with this much impact slowly influencing the mindset of people, government will require thorough amendment of its policy to curb the foreign content while preserving the local one, as although this phenomenon is still not chronic, however it is best to fear and prepare for the worst.

Although the process of obtaining past researches on similar phenomenon yields nothing, hence this research is believed to be pioneer in digging deeper into this peculiarity. However, it is mostly understood that some variables, or the causing factors are such like age, education, place of living, influence of significant others, different subcultures, and as well as level of exposure to foreign movies and online reviews.

Initial observation (pre research) shows that people living in cities are more susceptible to this phenomenon, most possibly due to the flooding of foreign movies that are relatively better than local movies in general, may be reinforced by the pressure of others into forming a typical mentality.

The Phenomenon

Exactly like previously mentioned, the peculiarity that triggered the research in the first place was what causes the incongruity of denying local movies as realistic while at the same time concurring how realistic foreign movies are on the same basis that movies are not supposed to be real.

There is no problem with the ticket sales or revenues of local movies, since local movies do receive high gross profit in local market, for instance Cicakman, a hero-fantasy movie scored RM6. 7 million while still in the same movie theme, Spiderman scored USD 2. 1 million in Malaysian market, of course it is not fair to compare the fan base but this proved that there is no problem with the behavior of Malaysian viewers, but the perception of the people. In simpler meaning, they do watch local movies but constantly undervalue every factor available in regards to foreign movies, and this research is meant to discover the plausible sources.

Dependent Variable

In determining what dependent variables of this research are going to be, firstly it is important to identify what kind of approach the research is going to be conducted, and since the topic is planning to digging up the mind or stigma of people, hence perception approach is the correct channel to analyze the Malaysians mentality on whether they find local movies are not realistic compared to foreign movies. Therefore it is obvious that the perception or mindset of the local Malaysians is the subject issue, which is ultimately the dependent variables that would be affected at the end of the cycle of factors.

A perception is the result of many surrounding elements or influencing factors, whereby it is like a blank canvas ready to be painted with the colors of perceived reality affecting the mindset. Hence, it is ironic that for a movie watcher to have biased insight against the local movies escaping reality nature, but what is wryer than that is through initial observation of this phenomenon; some people do not have this stigma and because of that it further strengthens our decision of making the perception of audience as the dependent variable where it will see changes when any independent variable is put as a trigger or cause.

The perception of audience is also identified to be the dependent variable due to the fact that they live in Malaysia, which are supposedly giving them the familiarity of the culture that is incorporated into the local movies, and since it is a psychology phenomenon we cannot directly measure one’s mind but we can measure up the extent or the spread of this particular perception of movie audience. With all the rationale it is then decidedly that we are going to use the perception of audience as the dependent variable that changes accordingly to the identified independent variables to get us closer to the ‘reality’ of the research topic.

Independent Variables

As mentioned earlier, there are forces that act behind the shadow of the dependent variable which was the perception of unrealistic local movies among audience. There is not only one but many credible elements that manipulate the outcome in various ways when these independent variables are put in motion to exploit the results in diversified changes. The factors below are notified to be of the most significant variables that could show momentous variety outcome on the dependent variable.

Flooding of Foreign Movies

Undeniably the ratio of foreign movies in Malaysia has significantly overshadowed the locally made movies. There is no restriction only to Hollywood movies, but lately many more movies from all over the world such as Middle Eastern, Bollywood, European, Hong Kong and Japan gets the attention of movie distributors in dispersing the foreign movies here in Malaysia. Judging from the overall movie titles per month basis, locally made movies, be it Malay, Tamil or Chinese movies are still on the minority scale compared to the available foreign titles which make up most of the showing list.

With this much flooding of foreign movies that does not halt its presence here in Malaysia throughout the whole year, Malaysians are served with these foreign movies especially of Hollywood (being the most popular), therefore it is definitely a crucial factor to count in the ‘excess’ of the foreign movies may contribute to the perception of Malaysians that local movies are nowhere as realistic to foreign movies.

Influence of Friends

There is no single person on earth can stand loneliness hence the very reason why they need company. Friends do indeed play the most significant role of shaping the not only attitude but also the large percentage of perception pattern. Studies show that the influence of friends often surpassed the influence expressed by family members particularly during the age of adolescent; afterwards it would be a mixture of many factors. People also shares more secrets with their friends, so in this case people will be frequently affected by their friends’ mindsets to envision and share common view on a particular movie, as the one that people go and watch movies together are with friends.

It is important to keep one’s insight perhaps on any significant issue in line; therefore resulting in strong and impenetrable wall of perception on whatever issue that they agree on, and it could be unintentionally in the beginning but the effect of the ‘friendship’ especially brotherhood-like bond will be concreting their perception on local movies realism.

Pre-nurtured Stigma of Superior Others

As citizens of a country that has gone through many colonial rules since half a millennium ago starting with Portuguese in Malacca in 1511, Malaysians had always been conquered both physically and internally.

These conquerors proved that they were not only superior in military and firepower technology, but also they left the impression that we the natives of our land could never stand on par with them in everything including culture, deeply tainted within our ancestors’ perception. Unfortunately this stigma has been ancestrally passed down from one generation to another and even now some Malaysians do still consider the grass of the other side to be greener.

Although it sounds general but this perception is strong enough to be identified as one of the factors that could cause dissimilarities in the dependent variable as they watch and analyze a movie through a programmed way of thinking although it is full of preconception.

Technology Used in Movies

Realistic is commonly defined as “aware or expressing awareness of things as they really are”, and if we are to follow this version of realistic then the technological aspect in a movie plays extremely important role to influence the perception of viewers.

The technology of CGI and lately the assimilationof three dimensional perspectives have caught the wows and awes of audience. The main point in taking the technological aspect of movies is since foreign movies magically make something that was not there to appear, in other word, fake but are considered as realistic, then do the ‘low’ technological local movies that do not go through this process of faking things out awkwardly being regarded as unrealistic?

As weird as it may sound, this is what makes the technology used in movies as an altering factor that could shift the mentality of viewers that local movies are not realistic out of the stable axis. The burden of a movie success is not just lying on the shoulders of the actor and actresses alone but a movie is the child of a director therefore it is the responsibility of a director to make sure the overall quality of the movie is intact. A movie direction is the result shown by the combined talent, skills and hard works of the production team including the casts, crews and producers.

Bad leadership and directing by a director will ultimately summon dissatisfaction from the viewers and critics, for example. With this principle it is not surprising that it gets to be one of the factors that influence our dependent variable. Research Objective Who is not attracted to the animating pictures projected on a huge, wide silver screen and watch our imagination gets flashed on the screen? The world nowadays has changed drastically that entertainment is not only limited to the words written on paper, also not the television series nor movies, but it has expanded close to once before science fiction.

Entertainment can be defined as a diverting activity that holds the attention of the people. Entertainment by itself holds wide definition so it is wise to peg down to a smaller scale of business aspect, since movies or films is a shell containing motion pictures to be viewed purely as a medium of art in the bigger entertainment industry. Mankind has studied many things that are intriguing enough to them, either just for entertainment or educational purpose, and throughout the times academicians have regarded movie industry as a legit study field that provides the opportunity to examine the elements of movies or films.

The ever expanding cinema or Cineplex has turned motion pictures as one of the most profitable entertainment industry especially in Hollywood, which is the pioneer in almost any new film technology. Digital format has taken the place of analogue film technology and the changes can be immediately seen, hardly nowadays a cinema used roll-film and viewers had to experience the visual scratch anymore since cinema projectors had switched to a digital video projection as well as cleverly stimulated surround sound.

Every moment passes the scenes of movie industry is changing, one second next will be different than one second before, as the entertainment industry especially in the movies form will keep on evolving to cater people needs.

Research Questions

Is the flooding of foreign movies causing a person to have biased perception on local movies?

Through this question we could get a more in-depth idea on the relationship between the foreign movies invasion on Malaysian shores and its impact on the perception of Malaysians.

This question is remarkable since there are people who think of local movies are more realistic than foreign movies, despite the fact that Malaysian cinemas are constantly showing foreign titles more than local movies. It is important to relate the over exposure of foreign movies inclusive of the reviews and other promotional attempts with the impact on the viewers so we could assess the depth or extent of these two variables. Does influence of friends affect the mindset of Malaysians to underestimate realism of local movies?

Friendship ‘forces’ a person in that circle to behave, think and perceive things on the same line with very minimal deviation. It is no wonder what friend factor could influence one’s perception, and this is why it is beneficial to know how far do friends play their parts to mold each other by ‘imposing’ a general idea that is to be shared by the circle, or in the process there is a possibility that the impact is backed up by other hidden factors, unseen until they strike. We will be able to find out whether the question will bring us closer to yes or no by analyzing the answers from the samples during the research.

Does the stigma of ‘superior others’ instilled prematurely impose a biased perception on local movies?

As mentioned previously under independent variables, it is widely known that even though through words Malaysians may deny that they do not think outsiders are always ahead of us, but their behaviors may tell otherwise and perhaps describe the true perception. Therefore, we would measure how far this one particular stigma is affecting the phenomenon we are trying to study. The caustic remark is too great to be cast aside since realistic factor in local movies can never be as close as o those of foreign movies according to the phenomenon, but by obtruding our definition of the nature of movie which is as an escape to real world, is not it supposed to be otherwise? Is the perception of realistic factor of local movies shaped by the technology used in movies? The evolution in cinema technology has always started outside of Malaysia, thus one of the reasons why there is not much newer technology used in local movies.

However, is there any basis in theorizing a movie is not realistic when it does not use sophisticated technology? If there is, will it be affecting whether people like the movie or otherwise?

This question should be tackled since most viewers; in particular the Malaysian viewers do not have the ability to analyze movies from education and artistic aspect, but often lay opinion based on what they see with naked eyes, which should conform its nature of entertainment. Does director’s proficiency have any impact on what people think of realism factor of local movies? Just like the casts, directors do have their own fans and followers who support them in their career, and just like the actor and actresses also, the industry appreciate and recognize directors’ contribution as the most important aspect of movie success.

Their skills differ thus the reputation they have been building is identified as one of the question on whether they do take tolls on people perception of local movies to be deemed as not realistic enough, satirically going against escapism core purpose of watching movies.

Reference

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